


Black Snow

by AuthorAuthor



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Black Widow Program, Department X, Department X isn't so bad, Everyone gets cake, For now everything is adorable and kind of fucked up, Happy ending I guess?, Kid Natasha, Natasha's messed-up childhood, POV Natasha Romanov, Protective Natasha Romanov, This will all end in tears and bloodshed, Warning for attempted garrotting and skull crushing, but not yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 07:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2260611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuthorAuthor/pseuds/AuthorAuthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Department X has no scruples about using children for espionage work. After all, the Black Widow Program begins training at age six, and conditioning can begin even earlier - <em>not</em> making use of such valuable assets would be a waste.</p><p>Natalia Alianovna Romanova is nine years old when Department X sends her on her first mission.</p><p>The Winter Soldier goes with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Snow

**Author's Note:**

> A different kind of a take on Natasha and Bucky's Soviet-era relationship... Little-girl Natasha running around Russia with the Winter Soldier, fighting capitalism and committing acts of violence, good times! Enjoy!

Department X had no scruples about using children for espionage work. After all, the Black Widow Program began training at age six, and conditioning could begin even earlier – _not_ making full use of such valuable assets would have been a waste.

By the time she was nine years old, Natalia Alianovna Romanova had been trained to memorize hours of conversation, and to report it back verbatim. She could pick a tumbler lock in under a minute using only a bent paperclip. She knew how to booby trap a package so that it would explode when the string around it was cut; how to make a timed fuse for an explosive out of a wristwatch or an alarm clock; and how to hotwire a truck (even though she was still so small that she wouldn’t have been able to see over the steering wheel).

She had only been given the most basic of combat training as of yet, but that was alright – that would come later, when she had grown a little more. Although the food rations in Department X were carefully and scientifically calculated to provide exactly the right number of calories and nutrients, Natalia was still a thin, undersized little child, a physical reminder of her earlier life in the orphanage that she had yet to outgrow.

Natalia Alianovna Romanova was looking forwards to more combat training. She liked learning things and showing off that she knew them, because Ivan Petrovitch Bezhukov was so proud of her when she did. Petrovitch was the man in charge of Department X, and it was Petrovitch who had given her this, her first mission. Natalia was determined not to let him down.

Just now she was practising hiding, tucked in behind the back wheel of the big black car that would take her to the mission site. Ilya, who kept the storerooms, had given her an over-large overcoat to wear, and the sleeves and hem of it dragged in the dirt as she concentrated on staying very still and very quiet. She was waiting for the Weapon.

A little thrill ran through her as she savoured the thought of having a Weapon of her very own. She knew what a tremendous responsibility a Weapon was, and Petrovitch had made sure she understood how much trust he was showing her by giving her one.

“A good soldier takes care of her Weapon,” he had told her, “and when she does, her Weapon will take care of her.”

A few people passed by her field of view, walking to and from different buildings in the compound, moving quickly with their eyes on the ground. The Department was run on a strict schedule, with every minute of every day accounted for, which made it all the more unforgivable that they should be late in bringing her Weapon.

Along with his advice, Petrovitch had tucked a piece of gingerbread wrapped up in a paper napkin into her pocket before she left. Natalia was just wondering if she should maybe eat it now, in case someone tried to take it away from her later, when she caught sight of Vasily and Agafia coming out of the Red Room with the Weapon between them.

Natalia stayed very still as they approached. The two laboratory workers never even looked in her direction, and she felt a twinge of contempt. The scientists in the Department were always giving themselves airs and letting everyone know how smart they were, and yet they didn’t even know enough to scan the shadows and identify likely places of concealment as they approached a target! They were silly, unworldly and unfit to be allowed outside without a guard, and Natalia was thinking about how she would sneak up and surprise them when the Weapon lifted his head, and looked straight at her.

It sent a shock through her, as though an electric charge had been lightly applied to the tip of her nose and had set every strand of her hair standing on end. She stared, transfixed.

He didn’t look away from her for a single moment as they came closer to the car (and how stupid were Vasily and Agafia that they didn’t notice that!), and only broke eye contact when they had come right up beside her and the bulk of the car came between them. Natalia crouched lower, trying to calm the rapid beating of her heart.

She waited as the three pairs of shoes walked past her, feet crunching on the frosted ground, and then scrambled out from under the car behind them just as Vasily was sticking his head in the car window and saying: “I don’t see her, do you suppose she’s inside?”

“You’re late, Comrades!” she exclaimed, folding her arms in front of her chest. Vasily started and turned, trying to hide his smile, and she turned her most quelling frown on him – this was her mission, after all, there could be no doubt who was in charge.

“Our apologies, Agent Romanova!” he said, with a click of his heels. He was an old man, balding a little, and his ears stuck out, but he smiled a lot and played cribbage with the children in the evenings, so Natalia decided to forgive him for making fun of her. “We were making sure your equipment was in order!”

He lifted his hand as if he was going to touch the Weapon on the shoulder, but then seemed to think better of it, and let it drop. His smile seemed very odd, and Natalia thought she recognized the proud and terrified expression of a small man holding onto the leash of a very large dog.

Trying to hide the excited hammering of her heart inside her chest, Natalia allowed her gaze to fall on the Weapon. She avoided looking at his eyes. He was dressed like a soldier, and even under the bulk of the military overcoat he was wearing she could tell that his shoulders were very broad and very strong. She let her eyes travel down his arms, and felt a tingling thrill of something between pleasure and apprehension when she saw that his left hand was metal. As though in response to her gaze, the fingers flexed.

Aware that to appear impressed would be to admit a weakness, Natalia put on her most critical face. She paced a slow circle around her new piece of equipment with her head tilted a little to one side and her lips pursed.

“He will do,” she said, loftily, and only then did she risk looking up into the Weapon’s eyes. They were beautiful eyes – clear and brown – and they seemed to look straight through Natalia, as though the Weapon was looking at something behind her, or inside of her, or on some other plane of existence altogether.

“This is the Winter Soldier,” Agafia said, in her usual crisp, clipped voice. Unlike Vasily, she wasn’t smiling at all; Agafia took her work very seriously. “He has been instructed to obey your commands. You may speak to him in Russian, he will understand you.”

Natalia was somewhat puzzled by that – of course the Weapon would understand Russian, didn’t everyone? – but it was quickly eclipsed by the thrill of being given command of something as powerful as the Winter Soldier. She had to test him.

“Come here,” she ordered.

The Winter Soldier stepped forwards. Gleefully, Natalia stuck out her hand.

“Shake!”

The Winter Soldier took her hand in his, and shook it, his expression remaining blank throughout. Natalia was only a little disappointed that he gave her his human hand. Privately, she resolved to examine the metal one more closely at the first opportunity.

She pointed to the car. “Get in. You will drive me to the mission site.” Without hesitation, the Winter Soldier turned and marched around to the driver’s side of the car. Natalia turned to Vasily and Agafia, bursting with pride. “You have done a fair job with him, Comrades,” she said primly, because it didn’t do to let the scientific staff get above themselves. “I will tell Ivan Petrovitch so.”

Vasily bowed low in acknowledgement of the compliment, his hand pressed over his heart. He whisked open the car door and held it for her as she got in, then bent his head to speak to her through the car window.

“I expect to get my Soldier back in one piece!” he cried over the grumbling of the engine. “Take good care of him, Agent Romanova!”

“I will!” Natalia promised, warmed by the flush of pride provoked by his words. “Good bye, Comrade!” To the Winter Soldier, she ordered: “Drive!”

Agrafia had already turned and was striding back towards the Red Room; but Vasily stood just inside the gates and waved until the car turned around a sharp curve in the road, and he was lost to view.

//

Natalia found it difficult to sit still. She bounced up and down in her seat, pressed her face against the window to watch the stands of birch trees flit by, and amused herself by folding and refolding the road map Petrovitch had given her.

Then she remembered that she was the leader of a Very Important Mission, so she sat up very straight with her hands folded over her lap, and glared sternly at the road ahead.

“You will drive to Anadyr,” she told the Winter Soldier. “I will give you further instructions as we proceed.”

The Winter Soldier said nothing. His eyes flickered from the road to the rear view mirror and back again.

Natalia watched him admiringly out of the corner of her eye. This was a very fine Weapon, she though complacently. Petrovitch must have a very high opinion of her, to have given her such a good one for her very first mission.

It was chilly in the car, and she drew her legs up onto the seat so she could tuck her coat around them. Her stockings were wool, which was warm, but her shoes had holes in them that let the cold in to pinch her toes, and her dress, faded from many washings, was not very thick.

It was all deliberate, Ilya had explained to her as he pulled each item down from the big shelves that stretched all the way up to the roof of the warehouse. A little girl in warm, new, expensive clothes was something unusual, something that people noticed – but little girls in well-darned stockings and cheap cotton dresses were common enough that no one noticed them at all.

“If you don’t want to blow your cover, Natalia, then pay attention to your clothes! Why, I could pick out an American spy by the stitching in his jacket alone! And buttons!” Ilya had whistled, long and low, and shaken his head. “There isn’t a thing you can’t learn about a man from his buttons!”

Natalia had only sort of laughed at that, because while it was a very funny idea that you could learn someone’s secrets from looking at the buttons on their clothes, she also knew there was a good deal of truth at its core. Details were important, when it came to your cover. Department X was good at details.

There were other things that were important too, and along with the coat and everything else, Ilya had also given her the length of garrotting wire that was wrapped around her wrist, rubbed with ashes so it wouldn’t shine in the light, and with beeswax so it wouldn’t catch if she had to wrap it around a person’s throat.

She bounced again in her seat, forgetting for the moment that she was trying to behave in a manner befitting a mission leader, and watched the landscape flashing by the window. It was early spring, which meant muddy roads and grey, slushy snow as far as the eye could see, but the speed of their progress was a novelty if nothing else.

“We are going to the airplane factory in Anadyr,” she announced, suddenly deciding there was no reason to delay any longer in the good news. “We are to blow it up. Isn’t it marvellous?!”

The Winter Soldier kept his eyes on the ruts of the road ahead of them.

“The factory is infested with saboteurs, you see,” she told him. “Traitors to the Motherland, who are in the pay of Western capitalists. We must wipe out the infestation.”

There was nothing in this to cause Natalia any pause. To her, it seemed as natural as when Anfisa poured boiling water over the nests the ants built in the cracks between the flagstones in the kitchen gardens, or when Gregor burned the big paper wasps’ nests that hung from the eves like poisoned fruit. It was right and proper to blow up the factory since it had become infected with the disease of ‘wrecking’, as it was known.

Petrovitch had explained it all very carefully. Russia was a beautiful country, big and strong, but there were some people (evil people, Natalia had understood at once) who hated her, and hated to see her doing so well and growing so big and strong. Those people were very sneaky: they might tell you that they loved Russia, and that they were loyal Russians and hard workers, but this was a foul lie. Instead of working hard at their appointed jobs, as all good Russians did, they only _pretended_ to work, while instead breaking their tools and making the machines run slowly and turning out shoddy goods as part of their insidious plot to weaken Mother Russia.

The idea that such perfidy existed in the world hurt Natalia very much. It was like hearing that a loved and much-petted kitchen worker had taken to putting cyanide in the family’s soup. Fortunately, as Petrovitch had said, the good, hard-working, loyal people in Department X were there to hunt down all such wreckers and Western agents and saboteurs like terriers hunting rats. Natalia felt very proud to belong to such a noble cause.

“We must be careful, though,” she cautioned the Winter Soldier. “No one must know it was us.”

That was an important part of the plan. Petrovitch had explained it, and then made her prove she could parrot back his reasons word-for-word to prove that she had understood.

Blowing up the factory would mean that the saboteurs could not build bad airplanes any more, which was good: but the saboteurs themselves would still be at large, and could hurt Russia and her people in other ways, which was a terrible thing! So it was very important that no one see Natalia or her Weapon around the factory. That way, Department X could tell people that it was the saboteurs who were responsible for the explosion, and then they could arrest them all and lock them up where they could not do anything bad anymore.

Natalia had to admit that this was all just a little bit puzzling. Surely everyone would know that Department X only did good work, and would cheer for them and let them arrest anyone who needed arresting once the Department had explained to them why it was necessary! But Petrovitch had explained that, although this would be a marvellous way of doing things, all the wreckers and saboteurs and lying foreign newspapers had made people so confused about what was true that many otherwise good people did not altogether trust the Department or what they did – and therefore, the Department had to work in secret, through trustworthy agents like Natalia.

She peeked shyly up at the Winter Soldier, who did not return her gaze at all. He certainly was a _very_ fine weapon, with his face clean-shaven and his hair cut short in the proper fashion for a soldier. The corners of his mouth were turned down, and Natalia wondered if perhaps he was unhappy – but, since he now knew all about their noble mission and the glories that awaited them upon their return and could therefore have no reason to be unhappy, she decided she was mistaken and dismissed the thought from her mind.

The glories that awaited them… Natalia snuggled down in her seat, with the collar of her coat flipped up against the cold, and hugged herself for joy. This was her mission – her _very first_ mission – and completing it successfully and bringing her Weapon back unharmed would put her that much closer to achieving her life’s goals. There were two things in life that Natalia wanted more than anything, two objectives that shone gold amid the hazy and indistinct shapes that made up her ideas of her future. She wanted Ivan Petrovitch to be pleased with her; and she wanted to be a Black Widow.

The graduates of the Black Widow Program came back to the Department from time to time, for equipment or healing or upgrading, and to Natasha and the other ‘little sisters’, as the older women called the girls still in training, they were goddesses. They came sweeping in through the iron gates in big, luxurious fur coats that you could get lost inside of, smelling of sweet perfumes and handing out treats they had brought back from the countries they had visited, candied nuts and dried fruits, chocolate bars and sticks of striped candy; or else they slipped in without a fuss to watch their little sisters at training, speaking to the trainer or leaning against the wall with their arms crossed and offering from time to time a quiet word of advice or approbation, always concise and to the point, their sharp, dark eyes missing nothing. More than anything in the world, Natalia longed to help Ivan Petrovitch by being as quick, as clever and as brave as her ‘big sisters’, and this – _her_ mission – was her chance to show that she could.

Her stomach growled, abruptly bringing her back to the present and reminding her of the gingerbread in her pocket.

She unwrapped it carefully, so as not to spill a single crumb, and held it in her lap for a minute, just to look at it. Petrovitch had given the little package to her as an aside, as he was walking her to the door – slipping it into her coat pocket with a wink and a finger pressed to his lips. Sweets were rare in Department X: they were not considered necessary by the nutritionists who dished up bland but filling slop in the cafeterias. To be given a piece of gingerbread, then, or a sugar cube that you could hold between your teeth as you drank your tea, was a mark of honour bestowed by Petrovitch and their instructors only on a privileged few, to be eaten as quickly as possible before another child could snatch it from you. Natalia contemplated it for a moment longer, left almost breathless by this further sign of the favour in which Petrovitch held her.

She would not let him down, she vowed. She would successfully complete the mission, or die in the attempt.

Her internal struggle lasted only a moment, and she hardly hesitated at all before breaking the gingerbread in half. She chose the smaller half (after all, rank had to come with some privileges), and offered it to her subordinate.

“Here.”

The Winter Soldier looked at her, looked at the gingerbread, and looked back at the road. Natalia frowned.

“Eat,” she said, sternly. “You must keep up your strength,” she added, because that was what the nutritionists said whenever one of the children refused their nutritious slop.

(And then if they still refused to eat it, then there was the little room in the outbuilding where you got nothing until you remembered how grateful you were to the Department for giving you anything to eat at all.)

The Winter Soldier reached out and took the gingerbread. After a bit, he put it in his mouth and began to chew.

Natalia sat back in her seat, satisfied.

“A good soldier looks after her weapons, so that her weapons may look after her,” she told him.

The Winter Soldier said nothing.

Natalia ate every bit of her half of the gingerbread, and licked her finger to pick up the crumbs. When she had finished, she folded the paper napkin back up and replaced it in her pocket.

//

The sun was beginning to set as they approached the checkpoint on the road to Anadyr. Natalia was confident that there would be no difficulties: their passports and travel permits had been inked and stamped by Petrovitch himself with his own two hands on the big broad desk that dominated his office.

“Issued by Department X!” he had said to her with a jovial wink as he handed them over. “And we don’t issue passports to just anyone, oh no!” He had also given her a fake Intourist I.D., like the ones the Bureau for Foreigners assigned to tourists from overseas: Natalia’s instructions were to leave it somewhere near the factory where it could be found, thereby providing valuable evidence that the factory had been blown up by a foreign agent aiding the saboteurs.

Of course, Natalia and the Winter Soldier were on a vital mission of national importance, but, as Petrovitch had explained to her, they did not have time to explain their mission to everyone, and so any guards they met would not know that it would have been very wrong to detain them. And besides, there was the danger of Western spies and informers among the soldiers, who must be kept in the dark about the Department’s activities.

Natalia kept a sharp eye out while the car was stopped, but saw nothing to worry her. She chatted and laughed with the soldiers as she had been taught to do while they looked over their papers – a bright, precocious, rattling little girl, travelling with her brother who was on leave from the army - and was so successful that they did not seem to notice that the Winter Soldier never spoke at all.

They drove past the town of Anadyr along the paved road that led to the airplane factory. It was a small town, built on the slope that led down to the edge of the river flowing into the Bering Sea. At this time of the year, the water was jammed with chunks of white ice, made scruffy and dirty-looking by the smoke from the factory stacks.

To their left, seen in snatches between the square cement buildings of the town, Natalia could see the white-capped waves on the rough black water of the sea; and on their right was the endless expanse of the tundra, its scrubby trees and banks of snow painted a pinkish-orange in the last light of the day.

“It’s beautiful,” she murmured, resting her cheek on her hand. She wondered what it would be like to live in Anadyr, between the tundra and the winter sea: two such vast spaces, so immensely powerful, each deadly in its own way. The inhabitants of Anadyr, she decided, must feel very small.

The Winter Soldier said nothing.

At her direction, he pulled off the road and stopped the car. Natalia fussed about it for a bit, popping the hood open and tying a handkerchief onto the antenna as a cover. A car stopped by the side of the road for no reason was a mystery, and mysteries risked being investigated; but a car with the hood up and a white cloth flying like a flag of surrender meant a simple breakdown, and they were close enough to the town that a passer-by could assume the driver and his passenger had walked back along the road. There was a small risk that some well-meaning person would interfere, but out here on the tundra, there was no cover: no trees or boulders large enough to hide a vehicle. They would have to chance it.

They covered the rest of the distance to the factory on foot in the growing darkness, with Natalia leading the way and the Winter Soldier carrying the undistinguished army-issued haversack that contained the equipment. On her shoulders rested the entire responsibility of this very important mission: and even when the Winter Soldier at times had to lift her bodily over large and inconveniently-placed rocks or carry her over ice-cold streams, her expression of grim determination did not waver.

She could smell the factory before she saw it by the dim light of the crescent moon: a big, low, ugly building that squatted on the landscape like a toad in a hole. Even at night, smoke spilled from its chimneys, blotting out the stars in the clear night sky. To Natalia, it was as though the exhalations of the infamous saboteurs within it were spreading their foul poison across the clean, crisp air of the night sky. She shuddered.

There was a tall chain link fence around the building, with coils of barbed wire running around the top. Natasha tilted her head right back to judge the height, and scoffed. To think that ordinary people considered this to be secure! It would be child’s play to climb over it, simple stuff, the sort of light exercise the Department considered suitable for even the youngest of its trainees.

She stuck the worn toe of her shoe into the fence and grasped the metal links preparatory to clambering up, but stopped with one foot off the ground. A broad grin suffused her face. She didn’t have to climb it, did she? After all, it was all going to be blown up anyways…

Climbing back down, she took a step back and pointed to the fence.

“Go through that!” she ordered, in a delighted whisper.

The Winter Soldier stepped forwards and grasped the wire of the fence in his metal hand. He squeezed, and the fence bent inwards towards his grip: and then he pulled, and the whole fence came right up out of the ground, leaving a gap large enough for Natalia to walk underneath. It was all she could do not to applaud, as though she were watching a magician perform a trick.

“Oh!” she breathed. “Oh, but you are beautiful! Let me see!”

She put out both her hands, and, as obedient in this as he was in everything, the Winter Soldier placed his metal hand in hers, palm up. Natalia ran her hands along the back of his hand and up his sleeve, marvelling at the intricate joints and the smooth metal, enthralled by how cool and perfect it felt. She pressed on his fingers until he curled them into a fist.

“So powerful!” she murmured. “Oh, yes, you are a beautiful Weapon, a lovely, perfect, gorgeous Weapon!”

And all that power was hers. It was a delirious thought, but it could not be indulged, not while there was work to do.

Careful to avoid the light shining into the courtyard from the windows of the factory, Natalia and the Winter Soldier moved through the snow to the building.

//

The inside of the factory was filled with the strange and twisted shapes of enormous machines, which cast odd shadows in the dim light of the hanging lamps. The centerpiece of the main factory floor was a line-up of half-finished airplanes, each at a different stage of construction. They looked lumbering and unnatural, like half an elephant, and seeing them splayed out with their insides all over the cement floor made Natalia feel suddenly doubtful that such unwieldy things could ever fly at all.

The factory was three stories high, with a ring of offices at each floor and a high domed ceiling in the middle to accommodate the growing aircrafts. As each plane approached completion it moved closer to the large hanger doors at one end of the building, from which it would take off into the skies. Except, Natalia reminded herself, these airplanes had been built by saboteurs and enemies of the Motherland, and had undoubtedly been rigged to explode in the air and kill the honest Russian soldiers who would fly them. It was a horrific plot: fortunately, it was also one that she was well-equipped to circumvent.

She guided the Winter Soldier around the looming bulk of one of the massive cranes used to lift the sections of the airplanes into place, and motioned for him to set down the haversack. Inside was everything a good Black Widow could need to protect her homeland, which in this particular case largely consisted of several dozen pounds of plastic explosives, four wristwatches and a lot of wire.

“We will place the devices around the planes themselves,” she instructed the Winter Soldier in a whisper. “In this way we will destroy them so that they cannot be used to end the lives of our innocent soldiers!”

The Winter Soldier’s silence delivered volumes of approbation to Natalia’s receptive ears.

The light inside the factory was very dim, but Natalia had been trained well. The Department had drilled her over and over again until she could put a device together in the dark, blindfolded, with one hand tied behind her back, and while being shot at. Her deft fingers did not hesitate as she pressed the pieces into place, twisted the stripped ends of the wires together, and carefully set the wristwatch that was being used as a timer. As always when she was doing something she was very good at, she felt a thrill of glee and could not resist showing off just a little bit.

“You see why you were sent to accompany me?” she whispered to the Winter Soldier. “Ivan Petrovitch says I have the most delicate touch of anyone in the Program! You, with your big fat fingers, you could never have done something requiring as much precision as this! You would have blown yourself up in an instant!” And she chuckled a little, imagining to herself how foolish even her beautiful Weapon would have looked trying to perform a task he was so utterly unsuited for.

The Winter Soldier, however, was not listening. His head was up, and he was staring up at the far corner of the second floor of offices. Natalia glanced up at him from time to time as she busied herself with putting together her devices, and was just putting the finishing touches on the last of four when she saw him stiffen.

Natalia froze. She had heard it too, off in the distant shadows: the short hiss and click of a door being opened and then shut.

She peeked around the corner of the crane, wide-eyed, and saw a bright, bouncing light moving along the walkway of the second floor. It vanished briefly as the bearer turned a corner, and then she saw the point of light beginning to descend a staircase along the far wall. The light was the beam of a flashlight: and it must belong to one of the night watchmen of the factory.

Anticipation began to fizz in the pit of her stomach, like one of the canned drinks the big sisters sometimes brought back with them from America. This was another task for which the Winter Soldier was not suited: this a task for a brave, clever and quick Black Widow, and Natalia was ready.

As she heard the watchman’s footsteps came closer, Natalia shoved the devices into the Winter Soldier’s hands. A little thrill ran up her spine as her flesh and blood fingertips brushed his metal ones.

“Go, put them in place!” she hissed, and the Winter Soldier went.

Natalia scrambled out into an unobstructed spot right in what she guessed would be the watchman’s path, and dropped onto her knees. As the beam of light from his torch bounced closer she shook her hair out, rubbed her fists into her eyes until she saw stars, and willed herself to cry.

The end result was, that when the night watchman of the Anadyr airplane factory came around the corner and shone his light full in her face, he did not see a spy with almost seven whole years of training from Department X. He saw a little girl, with holes in her stockings and a too-big coat, looking up at him with tears standing out in her eyes. He gave a grunt of surprise.

“What the devil?” he exclaimed, in a rough voice. “What the hell are you doing? You aren’t allowed to be here!”

Natalia gave a small sob. With the light in her eyes she could not see very much of the watchman at all, except as a vague, shadowy outline, but he smelled like cigarettes. That was good: if he smoked a lot, he wouldn’t have good lungs; and if he didn’t have good lungs, it would be an easy match for her to outrun him.

“Oh!” she cried, making her voice faint and quivery the way the Program had taught her. “Oh, please! I’m lost!”

She ended the last word with a sort of choked sob, as though she was about to burst into tears, and wrung her hands.

The light of the flashlight was hurting her eyes. “What do you mean, ‘lost’?” the watchman demanded. He did not sound as though he believed her story, which rather hurt Natalia. It was a lovely story, just like out of a book, and she had been very pleased with herself when she had thought it up. “How the devil do you get to be ‘lost’ all the way up here, eh? What mischief are you up to?”

He stepped closer, and Natalia raised her arm to protect her eyes from the light. She wanted to keep her night vision, in case she had to run away.

“Please,” she said, “I was with my brother Nikolai and his friends, and they were all going to climb the hill to the cemetery because Ivor bet that Nikolai would be too scared to go up at night when it wasn’t a full moon, but Nikolai is so brave that he said he would go, and I wanted to come too, only he said I was too little, but I’m not and so I did come, only it was so dark that I lost them on the road, and I saw your lights, and so I came in, and it’s cold and I’m hungry and I want to go home!”

She finished in a rush, buried her face in her hands, and burst into a torrent of noisy sobs.

“Eh!” She heard a small scraping noise, and guessed that the watchman had pushed his cap back and was scratching his head. “Well, that will teach you, won’t it? You missed the turn in the road, then, and lost your precious Nikolai. You should have stayed at home with your mother, like my little girl.” He scratched his head again. It made a very unpleasant sound, and Natalia felt sure that this awful, smelly man had dandruff as well. “But what the devil am I to do with you now?..”

Peeping out at him between her fingers, Natalia began to make out a more complete picture of the watchman. He was not so fine a figure of a man as Ivan Petrovitch, and came nowhere near the perfection of her Winter Soldier, but he was a stocky fellow and filled in every inch of his pale brown uniform. He had big thick eyebrows, too, which seemed perfectly formed for frowning with, as he was doing now while Natalia, crouched weeping on the bare floor of the factory.

When he didn’t seem at all close to finding an answer to his question, Natalia felt obliged to give him a hint.

“You could,” she suggested, “take me to one of the offices, perhaps? And I will tell you my telephone number, and Papa will come to pick me up!” There was no Papa, of course, but the night watchman was never going to know that – instead, it would take Natalia quite a long time to remember the telephone number, long enough that her wonderful Weapon could set all the devices in place, and then she could escape from the office right out from under the guard’s nose, confusing him terribly. A wonderful idea struck her, and she brightened. “Maybe you have a nice hot samovar somewhere and you could give me a cup of tea! And biscuits!”

“Tea and biscuits!” The watchman did not sound impressed. In fact, he sounded disgusted, but what could there be that was disgusting about tea and biscuits? “Is that what you’re after, then? Well, my little urchin, you won’t catch me with your tricks! A good little girl wouldn’t be wandering around up here, so far from the town, in the middle of the night… It’s a fine story you’ve cooked up, you and your Nikolai, but that’s all it is, isn’t it?”

Natalia felt a cold chill of alarm run down her spine. He knew it was a trick! But that was impossible! Unless… but no… the implications of it made her reel, but it was the only possible explanation.

Her very first saboteur – a real-life wrecker - was standing right in front of her eyes.

The perfidious fake watchman frowned and waved the beam of his flashlight in her face. “What’s the scheme, then, eh? Here to steal? Robbery, is it?” He came closer. “And I’ll bet you aren’t here alone, you’re too little to make it this far on her own… Is Nikolai with you, too?”

“Nikolai… is at the cemetery,” she said faintly. Her story wasn’t working! He knew she wasn’t alone! She had to get out of there, but had the Winter Soldier finished setting the devices?

Very carefully, she got to her feet.

“I think – I think I will go now,” she announced, but the watchman slowly shook his head.

“Oh no, you little gypsy! You’ll stay right here until I’ve called the police! If you thought you could come thieving around here and get nothing worse than a fright, you’ve got another thought coming! I ought to give you a good hiding!”

Natalia scowled. “You’re not very nice,” she told him. It wasn’t fair. Why did he have to go around saying cruel things like that? He was just a nasty stupid wrecker who didn’t wash his hair, and she was doing something important.

He gave a derisive snort. “We don’t breed fools or pushovers up here, my girl! I will put you in one of the offices, with the door looked to be sure you won’t run off or do anything else foolish, but you won’t be getting tea or biscuits!”

Natalia backed away. She could sense the looming bulk of some piece of the factory’s machinery behind her.

“I’m not a thief!” she cried. “Leave me alone!”

“Oh, no? Well then, we’ll just have to see what the police think of your story, my girl…” He stepped closer, and reached out to grab her.

Natalia dodged, kicked him hard in the shins, and ran.

She heard a bellow of pain and anger behind her, and swerved hard to the left around a large bench grinder as the man tried to run after her. He was bigger and he had longer arms and longer legs, but Natalia was small, and she was quick. She ducked and climbed, scrambling under and over and around and through the cluttered floor of the factory, swinging briefly from scaffolding, sliding under workbenches, and darting off in different directions as quick as a hare, always managing to stay just out of reach.

“Oh – no – you - don’t!” the traitor to the Motherland panted from somewhere behind her, through gritted teeth. A heavy tray of spanners and bolts crashed to the floor as he stumbled against a table and upset it.

Natalia swung herself up onto the strut of the front half of a small aircraft. The man lunged forwards with a growl and tried to grab her, but his fingers only brushed the hem of her coat as she darted forwards, nimble as a cat, and scrambled up and over the wing of the plane.

Cursing, the watchman had to back up to extricate himself from between the struts: and as he did so Natalia dropped down onto his back, looped the garrotte around his neck, and pulled it tight.

The watchman’s head snapped back, his fingers scrabbling for purchase around his throat. Natalia gritted her teeth and pulled harder as the wire cut into her fingers.

The man reached around and grabbed her by the back of her coat, tried to pull her off over his head, but Natalia tightened her grip and held on with her legs, keeping her body curled close to his. His hair was short and greasy, and smelled like cheap pomade.

Abruptly, he whirled around and slammed her into the side of the unfinished airplane. The blow knocked the breath out of her all at once. Embarrassingly, shamefully, Natalia’s arms and legs went limp, and she saw stars. The watchman threw himself forwards, and she was flipped up and over his head like a rag doll, the wire cutting cruelly into her palms before she could twist her hands free.

She sat down hard on the cement floor, her legs sprawling out from under her, in enough of a daze that it took her a moment to find her feet. The horrible wrecker, fighting to dig the wire out from the creases in his neck, lashed out and caught her just under the ribs with the toe of his boot.

Natalia cried out – she was out of breath, her stomach was bruised, and it hurt – and took off running. Behind her, she heard footsteps as the watchman started running after her, and then a high, hideous sound split the air as he began to blow on his police whistle.

She dodged around a stack of crates, zig-zagging like a rabbit because the watchman had a gun, and it was important not to give him a clear line of sight. Fortunately, there were a lot of shadows in the factory, lots of nooks and crannies and hiding places, and –

Natalia shot around the corner, and almost cannoned straight into the Winter Soldier. She dodged around him just in time, too breathless and frightened to try and give him an order, but she didn’t have to. The Winter Soldier stepped out into the watchman’s path, and Natalia spun around just in time to see his metal hand shoot out and closed around the man’s face, lifting him off his feet.

There was a wet, crunching sound, and blood splashed onto the Winter Soldier’s face. The man’s body gave a jerk and a flip, the movements ugly and uncoordinated, and then went still.

The Winter Solider released his grip. The body fell to the ground with an audible sucking sound as he pulled his fingers free.

Natalia stared. She had seen dead bodies before, but this was the first man she had ever seen killed.

She drew in air, sucking the breath past her teeth in a hiss, and darted forwards. The Winter Soldier was standing rooted to the spot, unmindful of the blood on his face and clothes, and Natalia pushed past him to the dead man.

Dropping down to her knees beside the body, she began to search it, just as she had been trained to do. Her hands moved quickly as she rifled through his pockets, feeling and dismissing his ring of keys, a small flashlight, a pocket watch. The body had fallen face-first on the ground, and she tried to pull it over onto its back, but it was surprisingly heavy.

“Turn him over, quickly!” she commanded.

The Winter Soldier grabbed the corpse and flipped it over as though it weighed nothing at all. Natalia averted her eyes from the fluids oozing from what had once been a face, and felt about inside the coat. It helped that the half-light of the lamps sucked the colour out of the spilled blood that stained the corpse (did they always bleed so _much_? Natalia wondered), turning it in to shades of grey.

She found the man’s wallet, and was relieved to find that it was made of good, thick leather. She flipped it open, and quickly replaced the Party Identification card with a fake Intourist I.D. Petrovitch had given her. After a moment’s thought, she took the ruble bills tucked inside and shoved them into her coat pocket, and replaced the wallet inside the man’s jacket.

“Bring him away from the plane a little, this way,” she ordered, and risked darting out into the corridor to make sure no one was coming as the Winter Soldier stooped and took the dead body up in his arms without hesitation.

Natalia chivvied him and his macabre burden over closer to the wall. At her direction, the body was laid out behind a heavy-looking piece of equipment in the workroom. She cocked her head on one side to consider the effect, eyes darting about the room. The devices inside the airplanes would go off, and the wall would fall just so – breaking the heavy winch free from the wall there – and it would be perfectly plausible that a clumsy saboteur who had been careless with setting the fuse would be crushed beneath the rubble created by his own ill-timed explosion. The injury to the head would be explained away, the fake Intourist I.D. would be found to identify him by, and they could claim the missing night watchman as an accomplice who had fled the scene.

A perfect story.

“Good,” she announced, breathing a little more quickly than usual, but otherwise calm. “Good. Back to the car now, we must go, before the devices go off.”

They retraced their footsteps back through the silent factory, the Winter Soldier striding along between the rows of stationary machines while Natalia hurried along by his side. After a time, she reached out and slipped her hand into his, without thinking. It was an instinctive reaction, and the cold metal fingers remained unresponsive and unmoving under hers.

(It wasn’t until many years later that Natalia realized the risk she had run. That metal arm felt nothing, had no mechanism for sensing pressure or transmitting the sensation of touch – the Winter Soldier could have crushed her hand to a pulp, and never even realized that he was doing it).

//

“Report,” said Ivan Petrovitch.

The Winter Soldier stood upright and immovable on the carpet in front of his desk. Natalia only half-listened as he summarized his actions and hers – she had already given her report, and as a reward was sitting at a little round table off to the side, eating white cake and kicking her feet against the leg of her chair. Petrovitch had already told her he was pleased with her night’s work (hence the cake), and he chuckled approvingly over it once more as the Winter Soldier ran through the events in his flat, emotionless voice.

“Good, good!” he said, when the Winter Soldier had fallen silent. “Ah, my Natalia, we shall make an excellent Black Widow out of you yet!”

Natalia squirmed delightedly in her seat, and licked the icing off her fingers.

Off in the corner, just at the edge of her line of sight, Vasily Karpov stirred in the wing backed chair he occupied next to Petrovitch’s desk.

“You see?” he said, leaning forwards a little so that the shadows from the chair fell away from his face. He spoke quickly and clearly, as though he hated having to speak and wanted to do it in as little time as possible, without being asked to repeat himself. “The conditioning is faultless. He is the perfect soldier. Control must be absolute, if even one of your little girls could handle him.”

Natalia found she had rather lost her taste for her cake. She did not like Vasily Karpov, and something in his voice made the food sit very uncomfortably in her stomach.

Petrovitch pressed his hand to his heart as though he had been wounded. “Please!” he exclaimed, half-humorously. “You will do me the favour of not speaking about my Natalia as though she were just any girl! Do you suppose your spoiled children in Stalingrad would be able to do as she has done this night?” And he looked at Natalia, who felt every one of his words as though they were a mouthful of hot milk on a cold night, and winked.

Reassured that Petrovitch was on her side, Natalia found she could eat the rest of her cake with perfect equanimity. She did so very quickly, though, in case Karpov was going to speak again.

“Your Winter Soldier is very fine,” Petrovitch was saying, “but, in the end, he is only one man.”

Karpov made an impatient gesture. “What of it? We can make more.”

“He may be unique.”

“Ha!” He said it rather than laughed it, as though it was a response he had learned by rote. “Men are unique the way cattle are unique: some are red, some are white, some have spots, but what are they all, in the end?” He settled back in his chair, already confident in his victory, and shot his last word out with great force and emphasis. “Meat!”

Natalia ignored them. When they began talking of little girls again, she’d listen: but they were only talking about men, who, by and large, were a sort of perambulating obstacle that had to be circumvented in order to complete a mission. She looked at the Winter Soldier instead, as he stood very straight and stared at something only he could see, and wondered when he would get his cake.

Pursing his lips together, Petrovitch shook his head, as though he doubted Karpov’s reasoning and was sorry for it. “Even so; even if we had an army of your Winter Soldiers, they are only a tool. He cannot improvise. Once you have set him on a track he is as inexorable as a steam train, and what will he do when the tracks are fouled and there is no handler to give him his orders?”

“Improvisation is failure!” Karpov accented the word by thumping his fist on the arm of his chair. “Failure on the part of the handler to anticipate, failure on the part of the trainer to prepare! So long as our information is complete, the Winter Soldier will have no need to improvise! He will not falter, he will not hesitate, he – will – be – perfect!”

He finished his staccato phrase and sat forwards in his chair, glaring furiously at Petrovitch, who had remained standing behind his desk. For his part, Petrovitch kept his mild temper. His was a fundamentally cheerful nature, over which other moods passed as lightly as scudding clouds. The effect was of a placid bear blinking mildly at a frothing boar.

“Well!” he said in conciliatory tones, running his hands over his broad expanse of waistcoat. “Well! Build your soldiers then, Karpov – make your tools, and let me look after my little wolf cubs, yes? And we will let the results speak for themselves.”

Karpov drew himself up out of the chair, casting a cold eye on Natalia as he did so. It affected her, as Karpov’s gaze always did, with the conviction that she had committed some deep and heinous offense, like shouting a bad word in a public place. Of course she had done no such thing: the only offense that Karpov could hold against her was that she was not one of his perfect soldiers who waited to be ordered to eat or sleep or kill, but as far as he was concerned, that was bad enough.

“Yes,” he said, with grim satisfaction, “let the results speak for themselves! Because wolves, even little ones, have sharp teeth, Petrovitch, and they will bite the hand that feeds them!”

Natalia bristled at the suggestion that she would ever, ever want to hurt Ivan Petrovitch, who was so kind and generous and who had poured out her tea with the two lumps of sugar with his own two hands, but Petrovitch met her eye. He winked at her again, and so she settled back in her seat with hardly a growl.

“And a knife can slip and cut the hand that holds it,” he replied. “I am not the only one who must remember to be careful!”

Karpov groped for a further retort, and found none at hand. He turned away instead, and snapped his fingers.

“Come!” he ordered, sweeping towards the door. The Winter Soldier pivoted on his feet without a single superfluous motion, and made to follow him.

The injustice of it swept through Natalia with an almost physical force. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. She leapt to her feet – even climbed up onto her chair, with her hands on the table, practically vibrating with excitement.

“But!” she cried. “Ivan Petrovitch! He hasn’t had any _cake_!”

Karpov stopped dead in the door and swung around to face her, openly incredulous, but Natalia was strengthened by her moral certitude and she met his eyes with hardly a qualm.

“The Winter Soldier,” he said, enunciating every word with perfect clarity and a great deal of disgust, “has no need of _cake_!”

Natalia did not see how this made a difference. _No one_ needed cake, it wasn’t something one withered away without, like water or the nutritious slop in the cafeteria. It was obvious that the Winter Soldier did not _need_ cake, and it was just as obvious that he _deserved_ to have some nonetheless.

Petrovitch, meanwhile, was smoothing his moustaches. Natalia would have suspected him of hiding a smile, except that when he drew his hand away his face was perfectly grave.

“Come now!” he exclaimed, very seriously. “Natalia is quite correct. You were about to commit a terrible injustice to the poor fellow, Karpov. Cake, however,” he added, turning to his protégé, “is not quite the thing for a soldier. He shall have peach schnapps instead. You will join us in a glass, Karpov?”

Karpov looked as though he had been invited to dine on live beetles. He said nothing, only stared with his eyes popping out of his head as Petrovitch got out the glasses and pulled the stopper from the bottle. Natalia all but burst with joy as she watched her dear, dear Ivan Petrovitch cross the floor and offer a glass to her lovely Weapon.

Petrovitch stopped in front of the Winter Soldier. He looked at him for a long time, with the unexpectedly penetrating gaze he summoned from time to time, like a big fish rising to a mayfly from out of a deep dark pond.

“Here, fellow!” he said, holding out the little glass of schnapps. “Would you like a drink?”

The Winter Soldier did not blink and did not move. There were not many things in this life that Ivan Petrovitch feared – but he was beginning to feel a little afraid of the Winter Soldier.

Natalia practically exploded from her chair.

“No, no! Not like that!” She seized her teacup from off the table, marched across the carpet and took the glass from Petrovitch’s unresisting hand. Standing squarely in front of the Winter Soldier, she held it up. “Take it!”

The Winter Soldier obeyed.

“Now hold it like this!”

The Winter Soldier held the glass out. Holding her teacup in one hand, Natalia brought the rims of their cups together with a clink of china against glass.

“Let us drink to the success of our project,” she intoned, looking very solemn and grown-up, while Petrovitch bit his moustache to keep from laughing, and then she grinned. “Now drink!”

And so, under the disapproving eyes of Vasily Karpov and the laughing ones of Ivan Petrovitch, the Black Widow (with holes in her stockings and a stomach full of cake) drained the dregs of her cold tea and drank a toast with the Winter Soldier (with the blood still drying in the joints of his hand), to the success of what had been, for each of them, their first - their _very_ first - mission.

//

END.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
